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Menchu: Presidential bid helping Indians
by Julie Watson

The Associated Press Translate This Article
15 March 2007

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) - Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu said Thursday her bid for Guatemala's presidency is opening doors for Mayan Indians and shows how far the country has advanced in building democracy and battling racism.

A small, non-Indian elite has long ruled the impoverished Central American nation where 42 percent of the population of 12 million is Mayan Indian.

That elite ``had 200 years to show what they can do,'' Menchu said in an interview with The Associated Press. ``We want them to give us the opportunity.''

Menchu, Guatemala's first Mayan presidential candidate, is one of 12 in a crowded field for the Sept. 9 vote.

She acknowledged the race could get ugly, but said she will not respond to any racist or macho attacks.

``I don't have to justify myself,'' she said.

Menchu won the 1992 Nobel Peace prize for her work as an Indian activist. Polls have shown that while she is well-liked, she trails the top three candidates and has only an outside chance of winning.

Even if she loses, she said, the fact that she ran at all will be a success.

``This is the time to measure whether Guatemala still lives with the fears that have produced racism and exclusion,'' she said.

Talk of an Indian resurgence in Latin America surfaced in 2005, when Evo Morales became the first Indian to win Bolivia's presidency.

Menchu is running on promises to clean up entrenched corruption in Guatemala, as well as plans to review the new Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States. She also wants to reform the country's military and police forces to make them more accountable and end widespread abuse.

Menchu, who received death threats during Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war—which killed more than 200,000 people, mostly Indians—said she no longer fears for her life, although two armed guards watch her house 24 hours a day.

She said she would not take sides in the ongoing struggle between President Bush and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for influence in Latin America.

``We are tired of waging others' wars and worrying about others' interests,'' she said. ``I want us to be able to work for the interests of our people.''

Her campaign has raised questions again about her biography, ``I, Rigoberta Menchu,'' which propelled her into the role of an international Indian activist and earned her the Nobel Prize.

The book is part of evidence she has filed in a Spanish court case charging Guatemalan military officials with genocide during the war, which killed mostly Indians.

More than a decade after the publication of her memoir, David Stoll, an anthropologist at Middlebury College in Vermont, published a book—``Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans''—that claimed Menchu changed many elements of her life or borrowed stories from others.

Stoll argues that Menchu should offer an apology and clear up the matter if she wants to become president and help Guatemala come to terms with its bloody past.

Menchu said if Stoll or anyone else has a ``different version of the truth'' from hers he can file his evidence along with her court case.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Global Good News comment:

Global Good News does not endorse any political party or candidate. Global Good News feels this article of the news of bid for the presidency by a Mayan Indian is a positive trend as it reflects more cultural integrity and rising respect for the indigenous population of Guatemala.

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